Premier Rachel Notley says she is frustrated that 100 schools promised by the former PC government can’t be delivered on time.

“When we discovered the degree of the delay, in many respects my first thought was to the parents that I met with during the campaign and their kids, who were talking about how long it took for them to get to their schools (and) how excited they were about having schools in their neighbourhoods ready to go,” Notley told reporters at the legislature Wednesday.

She said some parents said they even moved to communities based on promises the schools would be built on time “and then to hear it’s been delayed, on their behalf, I was very frustrated.”

The premier said that what her NDP government will commit to Albertans will be realistic.

“We’re not making announcements for the sake of making announcements,” she said. “We’re actually making announcements so that people can make decisions that impact the best interests of their families.”

The NDP and members of the former Progressive Conservative government continued to blame each other for the delays, with Education Minister David Eggen saying the PCs promised schools would be built on unrealistic timelines and failed to allocate funding for their construction.

He said he has asked the provincial auditor general to review what happened and determine what went wrong.

“The former government, not only did they put completely fictitious timelines on when these schools would be completed, but they failed to put the money in place to actually pay for this unprecedented build,” Eggen said.

He said his first job as education minister was to try to find funding to make up a $375-million school construction shortfall.

Eggen said it became clear in recent weeks that about 100 of those projects will be delayed past 2016, including many that will be nearly a year behind schedule.

He said there’s no evidence that bureaucrats misled the former government. He said the Tories set up the Alberta Education bureaucracy for failure by setting unrealistic timelines for the construction to be completed.

Eggen said the PCs made the promises for political gain.

“I find it very disturbing there was this misrepresentation for such a long time,” he said.

But PC interim leader Ric McIver said on a radio show Wednesday that his government’s ambitious timelines to build or refurbish almost 200 schools were on track until the NDP took over this spring.

McIver said bureaucrats told him the projects could and would be done on time.

The Wildrose official opposition entered into the fray Wednesday, questioning whether the new timelines are accurate.

“The minister needs to clearly explain what he is going to do to make sure that his new timelines can actually be met,” education critic Mark Smith said in a news release. “The Minister has had five months to get ahead of this problem and his hasty announcement (Tuesday) raises questions about whether he recognizes that new school construction should be his top priority.”

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